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Bye PJ!

I'm going to miss the depth, breadth, and intelligence of your reporting and analysis. "Real" journalists should learn from you.They won't because advertisers call the shots. So it's still up to the "amateurs". Best wishes for your new direction and may your dreams come true!

Me too tuxchick......For me, Groklaw has remained a permanent bookmark on FFox for the past few years and it will be sad to see it cease. Not only for the remarkable work PJ did on the SCO case and the amazingly complex and accurate legal analyses she put forward, but also in the way her newsclips column picked up some remarkable events that others did not. I, too, would like to convey my thanks for all her incredible work, her perseverence in the face of some very unpleasant obstacles that were put in her path and her good humour in spite of it all. Every good wish from me as well.

Shame on you. Just when the FBI confirmed all the stories about the crashing flying [saucers, sauces], meaning their [shape, ingrediants], the number of [occupants, spices], the measure of [height, consistency] and sourcing lending credibility to all those pillared in the past. May I point out, just in such a manner as you have done in your quote above. It was in slashdot, today and it's not April Fool's Day so it just has to be true.

Regarding the lwn comments on this, the major Troll was one individual when I visited. I have not gone back, but it has become too common for this one individual to push his agenda set at oo high a volume. I just skip over his screeds. Perhaps his venting attracted others of the same ilk or those prone to the same exhibitionism.

Me too here. I effusively agree with all the well-wishes to PJ, like most above.
Although I WILL say that it's too bad Groklaw won't be "fighting the good fight" against Micro$uck$ if the latter indeed WAS aiming to use the SCO lawsuits to ultimately destroy F/OSS!!

Also a goodbye from me and congratulations on a job well done, unlike a certain Florian, I couldn't care less who you are, all that matters is what you did, actions always speak louder than words.
And should another sleazeball company run by sleazeballs trying to steal Linux for themselves ever surface again hopefully you will consider coming out of retirement to help nail their arses to the wall come the IP revolution :)

In fact as a Scot i'm wondering if i should sue SCO for bringing the international acronym (SCO) for Scotland into disrepute, but thanks to you and the linux community i suspect they don't have much money left :)

@ Dino,...
One is only a "conspiracy buff" when there's no real conspiracy. The threats to Linux are real, directed & intentional. I can cite numerous examples, like the FoxxCon/AmiBios thing, patent suits against TomTom, revelations from the "Halloween documents", etc. Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean someone's not out to get you.

At this point, Groklaw's raison d'etre is gone. SCO is dead and buried, Microsoft has been slapped silly, and is floundering (yes, they really are).

Yes. People want to make money and they will continue to play hardball, but...
there are many conflicting interests (Google v everybody, everybody v. Google, phone space, web space, embedded space, IB "we are the world" M, etc, etc, etc.).

Don't know how long you've been around free software, but the stories don't seem to have changed much in the last 15 years while the landscape has changed radically.

Too much great work to be done to waste time worrying about conspiracies before they rise up to bite you.

Not to go off topic too much but I really agree MS is floundering. When you read Mundie dismissing the ipad (and android emulators) as a fad while also reading how said hardware is causing pc sales growth to drop in both the personal and corporate markets, then you know they are in some serious trouble.

I'll weep for M$ when Balmer & Gates have to raid garbage cans to eat. I've been around free software since about 1998, when you had to buy a 6 CD SuSE set, because nobody but rich people had broadband. Back then, Linux was not even a blip on M$'s radar.

Yes, the market has changed. But the battles still effect me. I have been trying for 2 years to put Linux on the Viliv S5. M$ (likely, since I only have indirect evidence) exerted pressure on the Manufacturer (YukYung) to switch from Red Flag Linux to M$, last minute, along with hardware changes that make it very challenging to install Linux. The manufacturer won't even officially release the program that turns on the peripherals that are deactivated at boot time. We had to get that from Intel, through back channels.

Why would a hardware manufacturer limit your ability to install another OS?!?! It's not a phone. There's no "App Store." The sale was already made. There were no additional software purchases, with vendor lock-in to be made. We couldn't demand support for something we were changing, if it went wrong, I mean. So why not just help us?!?! The sources existed, after all... One reason only: M$ wanted to limit the market for a form factor that cut into their sales model. You can't sell a $150 OS on a product that goes for only slightly more at wholesale. Netbooks, cheap tablets, etc. Sure M$ is hurting, but a wounded animal is dangerous.

I agree Dino, its better to leave while you'll still be missed then to get long in the tooth.

PJ has done a service to FOSS, Journalism and Society in keeping the public informed when many of those involved wished to keep it under the radar. It is my sincere hope that she does not stay 'retired' for long.

Maybe someone can poke ESR to write a Halloween doc XII now Groklaw is gone? Yeah, I'll miss it too, even while I voiced some criticism about the 'non-disclosure' of the one who wrote the blog.
Maybe when I'm sixty we'll all finally know who was behind the blog, and if there was a 'deep throat' behind the blog as well. Until then, a job well done; apart from Roy I can't think of someone else who put that many effort in it.

Agree, because after all, what's the fun of knowing who Roy is? I'd rather know some MS-shills which are still out there by name (Oh, forgot; one of the most important - thanks to Roy - I do!).

More serious, I think when you're as 'high in the three' as PJ was, full disclosure may have been pretty suicidal. More interesting would have been if there was any 'corporate' money backing the blog or not.

As a forum which brings competent review and appraisal to stories that straddle the mostly neglected intersection of technology and law, and recruits both the solid IT expertise and the solid legal expertise needed together to promote a real understanding of these stories, and addresses them from a reasonably well-informed and objective perspective, Groklaw has been invaluable, and is still needed.

I never saw Groklaw as an "anti-SCO" site, but as a law and technology site, whose focus was somewhat hijacked by the SCOG attempt to steal Linux. There are are still new and ongoing issues which need the kind of attention that Groklaw can bring to bear - and so far, only Groklaw has.

Even today, the news makes abundantly clear -- with a steady stream of new stories such as the Sony v GeoHotz case, the Novell patents (CPTN) deal, and many other similar issues -- that a site such as Groklaw, which can provide an objective and fair-minded yet FOSS-friendly perspective (or for that matter, even a FOSS-sceptical perspective!) to the legal facets of socially significant "technology stories" is an immensely valuable resource and will be difficult to replace or even match.

The mainstream press and even the technology-oriented journals overlook or give only superficial attention to these issues. If Groklaw isn't addressing them, will anybody else pay attention?
Groklaw hasn't become out-dated. Far from it! But perhaps this is a felicitous moment for for PJ to stand-back, rest up, and reassess Grocklaw's focus and priorities, and remember what it's raison d'etre has really been all along.

And if PJ still decides she really is done, her contribution has been very substantial, and greatly appreciated.

Ok, just a short list (because I don't have the time and really don't feel like getting into it) :

* The accusation that Google's use of "scrubbed" Linux header files is a copyright violation of the GPL... Refuted by Linus Torvalds himself.

* Florian spearheads the No Software Patents movement in the EU, goes after IBM as a software patent "baddy," but strangely ignores the abuses of M$.

* Florian often over inflates the validity of patents used in patent violation suits. Often, these cover basic & obvious computing functions.

The bottom line is that the guy chimes in on a very legal related subject, but as far as I know, has no legal training what so ever. And his opinion, on what patents are valid or not, are not only shared by a small group (him & the plaintiffs), but more often than not, smack of an attempt to throw gasoline on the fire. The guy is a lobbyist, not an IP expert.

OTOH, I'm not sure "IP-experts" do know about patent validity, I think when cross-patent deals between companies are made - at that time it's mostly unknown to them if the patents they're trading will be upheld in court. It even matters which and what level of court; as the Microsoft/MP3 patents showed.

I disagree with this part of your statement. I think they very much DO KNOW about patent validity, but just don't care. They are not paid to care, and instead, chase the money. I think it's hard not to know that patents for things like, "a computer connected wirelessly to the Internet & mounted on or in the dashboard of a car," is blatantly obvious to everyone, let alone someone skilled in the art, and forgetting prior art...

But I agree with uncertainty part of your statement, and believe they are banking on the uncertainty & cost of litigation to force cross-patent deals. If all these suits were just posturing for cross-patent deals, I'd say the "IP experts" carved a nice little snake oil industry for themselves. But things, like "The Halloween documents," don't support that.

And, I am sure that M$ is not alone in using patent suits in a "submarine patent" way, resorting to cross licensing deals as a "Plan B," when they are unsure of their footing. But, then again, the use of such obvious patents in the law suits begs the question of whether they know how the defending side will take it, maybe as a "wink and nod." So, what they COULD be doing is characterizing damages as injury, to soften the tax blow of licensing/vending deals, and using the Court as a pawn to do it. Think Lisa Marie Presley & Michael Jackson divorce settlement (and the rights to Elvis's songs part of the deal)... And using shills like Florian to make it all look Kosher in the press...